Axosoft’s Secret Service: Sending Large Files

A while back, Dan Suceava (head of Axosoft’s software development efforts) and I decided to embark on a mad-man-weekend-project. The crazy idea was for us to see if we could develop a simple web-based service that allowed a user to send large files (as big as 1GB) to another user without the use of FTP. We wanted the service for us! Sending large files via email was not an option since most email programs don’t allow large attachments, and we need an easy way to send 100MB+ files, videos and databases to friends, family and co-workers.

The service went live 3 years ago! Since then, more than 1.2 MILLION files have moved through the service and thousands more go through each and every day. An average of a 1/4 million people use the service every month and Axosoft has footed the bill for more than 147 TERABYTES of bandwidth usage. It’s pretty satisfying to see a weekend project generate such incredible demand. I’ve received hundreds of emails from people all over the world who have said everything from “you are a life saver” to “I can’t believe this incredible service is actually free.” People love it.

Today, I happened to run into my own article titled “Just a Weekend Project” where I wrote the story of how we created TransferBigFiles.com in just 20 hours and it brought back some memories. I wanted to revisit some of the images from that short journey:

We did a white-board design session in an hour and a half

I hand-drew the UI on my Tablet PC

We entered our 11 tasks into OnTime (it was V4.0 at the time 🙂

This is Dan installing the server

That was me – holy cow I look so much younger!

Since then, TransferBigFiles.com has received a couple of hardware upgrades and a couple of software updates to manage the demand and we’ve kept it free the entire time. We think the good Karma has definitely rubbed off on Axosoft’s success, so we’re pretty happy with the results.

The title of this article is “Axosoft’s Secret Service,” because we really don’t do much to promote Transferbigfiles.com. But, I wanted to let the cat out of the bag for my blog readers, in case any of you are looking for a super easy way to send large files — no registration, no software to download, share files with anyone who has an email address!